Express-News: Carlos Guerra
Carlos Guerra: City must stop playing political games over workers' wages

San Antonio Express-News

Web Posted : 08/28/2001

San Antonians have a lot
for which to be thankful. We live in a beautiful, vibrant city that brims with
history and culture, and our climate is envied by many.

But ask the average resident
if anything needs improvement and you're likely to hear about wages.

For decades, pay scales
have been among our weakest suits.

One big reason is historic:
For decades, local civic and business leaders marketed the Alamo City as a haven
where out-of-town businesses could profit from our large pool of trainable (if
not well-educated) non-union workers.

This marketing strategy
was very successful over the long term, but it came with a hefty, multifaceted
downside that still stymies us.

Many employers settled
here to hire workers for wages that made the production of goods and delivery
of services extraordinarily profitable.

But marketing oneself as
"the cheapest" does not build stability, because there is always another,
hungrier market whose workers will toil for less.

San Antonio's low-wage
marketing also stymied the development of a higher education infrastructure,
one that would mature into a powerful economic development generator.

Let's face it: UTSA and
our medical school are years behind similar institutions in other, even smaller,
Texas cities.

But the worst aspect of
our city's economic development strategy is that it inhibited the natural increase
of wages. The steady influx of new, low-wage jobs fostered a corresponding in-migration
of workers with low-wage expectations.

For much of the last decade,
calls for improving San Antonio's wages have grown louder. Communities Organized
for Public Service and Metro Alliance have done an admirable job keeping the
issue in the public eye and winning converts to the concept that we must replace
minimum wages with living wages.

But catching up with national
wage scales has been slow, in part because local governments have been among
the perpetuators of minimum-wage employment.

Two recent developments
are raising hopes for ending this cycle.

The San Antonio School
District recently voted to pay about 600 of its workers who were working for
$7 an hour a living wage of $8.25.

This development came after
the city of San Antonio approved what most of us understood to be an $8.25 hourly
minimum for its workers in the last budget cycle.

But Karen A. Bahow, director
of the Service Employees International Union, now reveals that at least 2,541
city workers earn only $6.25 per hour; 1,401 make $8.25; and only 1,331 earn
between $8.26 and $9.99.

While the city has 24 employees
who earn in excess of $100,000 a year, you'd be amazed at the number who get
no benefits at all and the number of "temporary" city workers who
have logged 40-hour weeks for years.

While our City Councils,
going back to 1996, have been telling us that no money was available - and threatening
tax increases - tens of millions of dollars have been sitting quietly in the
city's reserves.

Stay tuned.

To leave a message for
Carlos Guerra, call (210) 250-3545, or e-mail
cguerra@express-news.net.